DROP ROLE

Name

Synopsis

Description

DROP ROLE removes the specified
role(s). To drop a superuser role, you must be a superuser
yourself; to drop non-superuser roles, you must have CREATEROLE privilege.

A role cannot be removed if it is still referenced in any
database of the cluster; an error will be raised if so. Before
dropping the role, you must drop all the objects it owns (or
reassign their ownership) and revoke any privileges the role has
been granted on other objects. The REASSIGN OWNED and DROP OWNED commands can be useful for
this purpose; see Section 20.4
for more discussion.

However, it is not necessary to remove role memberships
involving the role; DROP ROLE
automatically revokes any memberships of the target role in other
roles, and of other roles in the target role. The other roles are
not dropped nor otherwise affected.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the role does not exist. A
notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of the role to remove.

Notes

PostgreSQL includes a program
dropuser that has the same functionality
as this command (in fact, it calls this command) but can be run
from the command shell.

Examples

To drop a role:

DROP ROLE jonathan;

Compatibility

The SQL standard defines DROP ROLE,
but it allows only one role to be dropped at a time, and it
specifies different privilege requirements than PostgreSQL uses.

See Also

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